Coming Forth by Day
by Rebecca Hb
Summary: In the Northern Water Tribe, a child without the name of his previous life never survives to adulthood. But Ataneq has, and now he means to find out who he was.


**Coming Forth by Day**

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Author's Notes: This takes place over a century after the end of the series.

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From horizon to horizon, the ground stretched out white and flat. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the midnight sun cast blue shadows as Ataneq walked. The young Water Tribesman wore a harness over his blue parka to haul a sled behind him. The supplies in it were getting low, but Ataneq did not turn aside from walking in as straight a line as he could.

He had passed the third and final of his manhood trials three months ago. He was a man of the Northern Water Tribe. He had completed his training to his master's satisfaction two months ago. He was, if not a master waterbender, then one who no longer needed a teacher.

But he was still not quite right in the eyes of the elders and the chief. Two of his uncles had died in the year of his birth, but there had been two other children born in the same year as him. There was an extra child, and the elders had worked their methods and determined it was him. His spirit was not from his family, though it was also not new to the world.

It was important to know who you had been, because who you had been could protect you from the spirits. Ataneq had grown up without that protection, which disturbed everyone all the more. Children without the names of their previous self to protect them **always** died.

Ataneq could have let it lie. Many people thought he should. He was a man grown, and his own name and his own experience could protect him now. But Great- Grandfather Hahn, the old man with the radiant hair, who had been Chief until he stepped down in favor of the son he outlived, who had lived to see the Comet come twice, who couldn't ever remember anyone's name; Great-Grandfather Hahn told him he was right to want to know who he had been.

The oasis was barred to him for this, and he didn't want to cross into the Spirit World anyway. He wanted the Spirit World to come to him. So he packed supplies, and he set out to walk. Losing himself in the white and the blue, letting his mind drift until he found the cracks between worlds, that was the way to invoke a vision-quest.

Ataneq walked, eyes staring at the glittering wastes of the North Pole. Snow began to fall, soft and heavy, but it did not cut the harshness of the sun.

The snow was black. Ataneq stared at it, flicker-memory of his great-grandmother Chulyin's tales of the Siege of the North passing through his head. Black snow meant soot mixed with the snow.

But he was too far inland for Fire Nation ships!, some part of him argued. He ignored the thought, tore at his harness so he could run without the weight of the sled.

There was smoke in the distance, and the city was just through the pass in the mountains. The smoke thickened as he watched, blackening the sky, while the black snow fell all around him.

Splashes of red like blood and blue like shadows appeared in the snow ahead. Whalebone weapons lay scattered and broken, steel swords were locked in ice. A red armored arm lay without an owner, but there was a man in blues burned past recognition and another and another. For every slain Fire soldier, there were three dead of the Water Tribe.

Ataneq howled as another plume of smoke went up, and his foot caught on something hidden under the snow. He fell, black snow exploding underneath him and blinding him.

He pushed himself to his feet, cursing in Old Ice. Then he stopped and stared.

Underneath his feet was a lush peach carpet, woven in simple box patterns. Square wooden pillars, polished a deep brown, marked off sections of the wall. There was light coming from somewhere, but Ataneq could not take his eyes off the vast portrait in front of him.

It was a Firelord's portrait. It had to be, there were no other people in all the world who would depict themselves with the sun-disc behind their heads. This one was a handsome man, dark-haired with a long beard. Flame flowed between his hands, black flame. Around his feet, gears and smokestacks rose and flamed. At his back, flaming banners covered the sky. A sash the color of flame lay over his arms, and a tie around his waist was looped in a design that surely had to mean something.

Ataneq had no idea who this Firelord was. Not Hitozi, the one who currently bore the crown. Firelord Hitozi couldn't firebend, there would be no flames in his hands on a portrait. And it wasn't his father, Firelord Zuko. Everyone knew the previous Firelord, may the moon hold him in her arms, had been horribly scarred.

Still. If he could find Zuko and Hitozi, he could figure out how this Firelord related to them. Ataneq turned his head to the next portrait-

The wall was blank.

He blinked and looked to the other side of the Firelord's portrait. There was another portrait there and another beyond it, all the way down into darkness. But the line of Firelords stopped at this one.

Ataneq scowled and crossed his arms. "What do Firelords have to do with _me_? It's the Moon Spirit I should be finding here! Everyone knows my great-grandfather was her betrothed, my grandfather was her adopted son. Everyone knows one of my great-grandmothers was her closest friend. The Fire Nation has **nothing** to do with me! It's the moon, and it's always been the moon!"

In a blink, he stood on a balcony overlooking a vast army of soldiers. The world was washed bloody in the moonlight, and he stared in horror at the red moon shining.

"Stop it!"

He stood before the Firelord's portrait again.

Ataneq slashed his arms violently in a waterbending move that would crack glaciers. But there was no ice here, only the line of portraits going back to the beginning. "Fine," he said. "Fine. This Firelord is the important one, is he? Then I'll find out who he is."

He turned to the Firelord before this one and studied that portrait. He wore the same robes and crown as the other Firelord, and he carried golden flames in each hand. No ribbon of fire arced between the flames as they did on the Firelord with black flames, nor did this one wear the tie the Firelord of black flames wore. At his feet, though, was a slain dragon.

Ataneq shivered and stepped to the portrait before him. He sucked in a breath at the sight of the comet arcing over this older Firelord. Comet above his head and soldiers at his feet...

"Sozin. Firelord Sozin." Ataneq turned his head towards his son. "Azulon the Destroyer. And that means you're Ozai. Which, all right, wonderful, what does that have to do with me?"

"You already know the answer to that," a smoke-worn voice said. "You're not stupid, much as you'd like to pretend to be."

Ataneq scowled and turned towards the voice-

Rather, he tried to, but the corridor spun around him so that he came back facing Sozin's portrait again without getting a single look behind him.

"You have to say it, though," the smoke-worn voice said, amusement tinting it like blood on smiling teeth.

"I am **not**-" Ataneq denied.

The red moon shone down on him, and the ranks of soldiers lifted their arms and bayed for blood.

Ataneq's lips peeled back from his teeth. He would give them blood, he would rip it from their bodies and paint their bones red as the moon-

"I am not Ozai," he said as he stepped back from the edge of the balcony. "I am Ataneq." He tilted his face up to the red moon and squared his shoulders. "But I once was Firelord Ozai."

Everything snapped away, and Ataneq found himself facedown in the snow. He groaned and pushed himself to his hands and knees, gagging as he spit snow out of his mouth.

Someone wearing a red robe stood in front of him. "I am given to understand that in the Northern Water Tribe, it's enough to know the name of your previous self. In the Fire Nation, we don't even bother with that." The smoke-worn voice was too familiar, but Ataneq could not bring himself to look at the man and see his face. "But you see, I did not name myself Phoenix King for no reason."

"Go away," Ataneq growled, melting the snow underneath those red robes. It was stupid and did nothing but make him feel a little bit better. "Your life is over. You can't have mine."

"A life of hunting and isolation because the Northern Water Tribe has decided to retreat behind its walls and only deal with the Southern Tribe? How enticing." Scorn filled the smoke-worn voice. "I had the world. What do I care for your pitiful little tribe?"

"You've got _nothing_ right now," Ataneq snapped. Anger and something too like shame coursed through him, and he wanted nothing more than to turn the smug bastard's blood to ice.

Bastard. Who cared the Northern Water Tribe was isolated? Isolation had protected them for the last two hundred years. They'd withstood the Fire Nation during the War, and they'd withstood the different sort of unpleasantness between the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation after the war that both nations were still recovering from.

"I have more than you ever will." The red robes rustled and turned away, fading with each step. "I have memories of places outside my homeland."

Ataneq climbed heavily to his feet. The only marks in the snow were his own trail. He turned all around and oriented himself, then started the slog back to his sled of depleted supplies.

Bastard. He'd show the dead Firelord. He was a waterbender with a boat of his own back at the city, and no one would stop him from leaving.

**-End-**


End file.
